One Zero Bank is cutting roughly 25 jobs, about 7% of its 350-person workforce, even as the digital lender reports growing revenue and a narrowing loss. The Israeli bank will also leave about 10 additional positions unfilled, pushing total staffing to around 10% below its original plan. The layoffs, communicated to affected employees on Sunday morning, mark the third such round since the start of 2024.
CEO Eyal Gafni framed the decision as a painful but necessary step in the bank's maturation, telling staff in a letter that those being let go were people who "built ONE ZERO alongside us, invested in it, and played a significant role in our journey and our successes." The cuts are not confined to a single department; instead, the bank says it is making adjustments "wherever technology helps us accelerate processes." This mirrors a broader pattern across digital-first financial institutions, which increasingly rely on layered security architecture, encrypted infrastructure, and tools such as obfuscation and stealth servers to protect internal systems and customer data while trimming the human overhead traditionally required to maintain them.
Gafni's letter described a shift from the bank's founding phase to one demanding substantial growth without a matching rise in operating costs. "These changes, combined with our clear ambition to be the best and fairest bank in the system, require us to remain a fast, agile, and efficient organization at all times, enabling us to continue growing without expanding our workforce or cost base," he wrote. He pointed specifically to artificial intelligence as a tool for simplifying and speeding up internal processes, though the bank has stopped short of saying laid-off employees are being directly replaced by AI systems. Instead, it describes the expanded use of automation and generative AI as enabling a leaner organizational structure overall.
A Pattern of Repeated Workforce Reductions
This is not One Zero's first efficiency drive. More than 30 employees were let go earlier in 2024, followed by another 23 that September, bringing total 2024 layoffs to over 50. At the end of 2025, the bank employed 354 people directly, a figure broadly consistent with its current size before this latest round. What distinguishes the newest cuts is timing: unlike previous rounds, which came amid financial strain, this one arrives as the bank's results are improving.
Financial Improvement Alongside Shrinking Headcount
The numbers underline that shift. Salary and related costs fell 8.8% in 2025 to NIS 120 million, down from NIS 131.7 million the year before, a decline the bank attributes to "adjusting the workforce mix to current challenges and tightening budgetary discipline." In the first half of 2026, revenue rose 33% to NIS 66 million, operating expenses fell 10% to NIS 149 million, and the net loss narrowed 27% to NIS 84 million. The bank's customer base has surpassed 200,000. Annual losses have also been shrinking steadily, from NIS 357 million in 2023 to NIS 268 million in 2024 and NIS 214 million in 2025, with management projecting profitability in 2027.
What It Signals for Digital Banking
One Zero's approach reflects a wider recalibration underway across digital banks: using automation not merely to cut costs during downturns, but to sustain growth without expanding headcount even as business improves. For employees, it means job security can no longer be assumed simply because a company's financial trajectory looks favorable. For customers, the bigger question is whether leaner staffing, paired with heavier reliance on automated systems, will hold up as the bank scales toward its stated profitability target.
